


An Eye for a Friend

by Myvoice



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Medical Procedures, Not A Fix-It, Not for squeamish people, There's a lot of eye stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25564924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myvoice/pseuds/Myvoice
Summary: Obito was the only one who didn't get him a gift. This was not a trade Kakashi wanted to make.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	An Eye for a Friend

“Kakashi, come here. I’ll do it now.”

Kakashi stared at Rin. _Do it… what?_ They hadn’t tried everything yet and Obito was in no position to be dictating anything. They could find a way to move this boulder and then Rin could use her medical ninjutsu to heal _Obito_. He closed his eyes for a second. There was no time, there were bound to be enemies nearby. No time, Obito needed to be extracted. No time to think, to shake off the concussion he’d given himself, to find a better way.

 _My fault, my fault, my fault_.

There was no time.

“I’m about to die.” A breath, a hitch. The truth. “But… I’ll become your eye.” _No, no, no, no._ “And see what happens in the future.”

The future. Of all the things to wish for. The one thing that a shinobi’s life could never guarantee. A future. A mistake and a whole future ended.

_My fault, my fault, my fault._

The future.

A nod.

“Lay down next to Obito. I’ll start with you.” Complying, Kakashi saw Rin instinctively reaching for her medical pouch. It wasn’t there. Of course they had taken it.

_Rule 43: A shinobi must not waste an opportunity to gather supplies._

Kakashi lobbed his graduation present at Rin who caught it efficiently and began looking at what supplies were left while Kakashi unwrapped the bandage around his head. Laying down and without pressure, the throbbing of his injured eye became more pronounced. He tried to force himself to open it but it was swollen shut.

“I don’t have enough morphine for both of you,” Rin said quietly.

“I’m dying Rin, don’t waste it on me.”

“I still need to get us out of here,” Kakashi countered, his voice a lot firmer than it had any right to be given how hard his heart was beating. Obito glanced sideways at him, a smile ghosting over his features.

“Morphine makes you so agreeable, though, Kakashi-kun.”

 _Rule 25: A shinobi must never show their tears during a mission_.

It didn’t stop Kakashi’s chest from convulsing around a watery chuckle.

“We don’t have time.” Any trace of emotion in Rin’s voice had disappeared, her face showed nothing as she set the syrette aside, next to Obito’s shoulder. Kakashi closed his eye and took a deep breath.

With careful hands Rin felt around the torn skin of his eye. Kakashi tensed up when she got to his eyelid. Obito’s fingers grazed his hand. He exhaled. He felt Rin activate her jutsu, probably to take down the swelling before proceeding, he felt her chakra seep into his skin and relaxed.

“This will hurt.” He hadn’t expected it to be painless but he hadn’t been prepared for the way the pain spread from his eye socket to the rest of his face when Rin pried open his eyelid to examine the ruin of his eye. He only managed to keep quiet because his throat constricted with the surprise. “I’m going to have to reopen the wound, it will give me more space and… There’s no time.”

Kakashi opened his eye to see a shadow of doubt in Rin’s face. This had never been done, there was every chance that Kakashi would reject the eye or that the eye would reject Kakashi. She didn’t have the correct tools and Kakashi _knew_ that eye surgery was not something medic nin were trained in, particularly not in the middle of such a long war. Saving eyeballs was not a priority.

“Here,” said Kakashi bringing out a kunai from his pouch. “I just sharpened them… This eye is your practice run, it’s already ruined, you can’t damage it further.” Kakashi attempted to make his voice soft, like his sensei’s but he could tell that it had little effect.

“Kak--"

“No time.” He lowered his mask and stuck the handle of a kunai between his teeth, nodding at Rin once more before closing his eye. Obito laced their pinkies together and Kakashi did his best to relax.

He felt Rin widen the wound across his eye, it wasn’t uncommon to reopen wounds to take poison or debris out so the sensation was not entirely unfamiliar, he had even done it to himself once. The first time he felt like screaming was when Rin started to remove his damaged cornea. When Rin finished cutting it away, he was drenched in sweat, moaning and whimpering pitifully.

“Kakashi.” Rin’s voice was faint and far away. “Kakashi, listen to me.” She couldn’t heal what she had done to his eye, not until it the transplant was ready and she still needed to remove the rest of the sclera. “I’m going to dose you. If your blood pressure is too high, you’ll bleed out before I can transplant Obito’s eye.” She had her fingers against his throat, counting beat after agonising beat.

“Half,” Kakashi croaked around the kunai once he was able to take a normal breath. “There’s one outside.” His ears were ringing, the pain was fading slowly but he couldn’t tell if it was him losing consciousness or the fact that he had reached the limit of his pain receptors. He didn’t feel the prick of the syrette nor the warmth of morphine that surged through his veins but the next time Rin took the kunai to his eye he managed to keep from whimpering. His teeth clenched around the kunai, digging into the wrapping until he could feel the metal underneath. He could no longer feel every single careful cut, the agony had receded to become a sharp pain, spiking every time Rin sliced muscle or nerve, becoming dull when she finished taking out what remained of his eyeball.

“Done. Kakashi, are you awake?” He was breathing harshly and his eye was closed, when Rin let go of him, his head lolled to the side but he grunted in response. He spat the kunai out and his eye flickered open. “Good, you… You’re doing great. I need you to press down, you’re bleeding.” She brought his hand up to his face and onto his eye socket which Rin had filled with gauze.

Next to Kakashi, Obito was looking at Rin as though he were trying to memorise her. When Rin turned to him, he tried for a smile and got a soft one in return before Rin injected him with the morphine and everything went slightly blurry. Kakashi braced himself to hear Obito cry out but he didn't make a sound when Rin cut around his eye. Kakashi had never thought Obito to be a coward but the chunnin did have a severe and obvious aversion to pain and suffering that made him hesitant. Kakashi thought it made him a substandard shinobi. Too late to fix it. Too late to fix anything. Still, he was glad Obito didn't seem to be in much pain.

Rin was murmuring something he couldn't understand, once or twice he heard Obito chip in but they spoke low and Kakashi was still too addled to get his brain to understand. Rin turned to look at him for a second then turned back to Obito. He saw her smile.

“Kakashi, I need you to take out the gauze.”

Pulling it out was an odd sensation. He didn’t know eye sockets were quite so deep. Immediately after pulling the last bit out Rin’s hands were on him. Methodically Rin threaded together nerves, chakra coils and blood vessels, convincing slightly atrophied muscles to wrap around this foreign body. There was quite a bit of blood but Rin hadn’t wanted to disrupt the blood flow in case she could not restore it quickly enough to avoid damage to the eye, or worse, make the Sharingan vanish. It took her half an hour; she was sweating by the end but she was certain everything was in order. Under her, Kakashi was supple, panting a little as his chakra melded with hers to repair his eyelid.

“I don’t have enough chakra left to fully fix the original cut,” she said as she used her chakra to stitch together the wound she had reopened. Under her Kakashi shrugged. “Ok. Go.”

With his heart in his throat Kakashi forced himself to open his left eye. Nothing. Black. It didn’t work. He shook his head and Rin placed her hands over his eye, this time he kept it open. Still nothing. Rin’s hands shook.

“Chakra,” Obito murmured. “You need to push chakra through…”

Kakashi concentrated, he could not send chakra to his eye. His body didn’t seem to recognise it as a part of him. It felt… blocked. Rin reactivated her jutsu and found both Obito and Kakashi’s chakra, slowly she brought them together. Kakashi gasped as the world came to view, tinted blue and full of information. He could see Rin’s chakra recede from her hands, orderly and controlled. He glanced at Obito and noticed the panicked whirls his chakra made as it tried to keep him alive.

“It works.” He sat up and a wave of vertigo smashed into him, Rin caught him before he could fall back, she looked into his eyes and wiped away the blood that remained with a gentle hand. She nodded, eyes hardening.

“Soldier pill. Blood pill.” Do you have water? He nodded. “Drink all of it. I’ll stay back, take care of him until…” Kakashi closed his eyes and turned away. But nodded again.

He took the blood pill first. Drank half of the canteen he had filled just before Rin was kidnapped and then swallowed the soldier pill. His coils burned with the chemical chakra, his new eye was particularly painful and he had to consciously slow the flow into it. The caffeine cleared his head, he could feel that he had a spectacular crash coming up but for now he was on top of the world. He turned to see Obito and Rin, he felt anger well up inside him.

_Never again._

He looked up and marvelled at just how much the sharingan could show him. He attached an exploding tag to a kunai and threw it at a crack in the roof. He jumped out right after the sky appeared above them. The enemy stood in front of him, meters away. Kakashi was crying.

“Kakashi.” Though soft, Obito’s voice reverberated through the cave. Kakashi could tell he was fading. “Look after Rin for me.”

Kakashi unsheathed his tanto.

“Don’t worry.”

There was blood on his hands. A lot. He brought Rin to safety with those hands, just moments after tearing out the heart of the man who had kept her prisoner. He kept her safe, trying to make up for the fact that he had been ready to abandon her. He had been too late. Too slow to _hear_ what Obito was saying. With Rin at his back he killed until he collapsed. He didn’t feel himself be caught, he fell through darkness. Too late, too slow, too proud, too certain.

The next time he had a clear thought he was looking at the stars. Every inch of him hurt. The entire left side of his face was throbbing and Obito’s eye stung.

_Am I dead?_

**Author's Note:**

> This was very much inspired by ANBU Legacy. Do yourselves a favour and go read it: https://anbulegacy.com/


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